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Dive Brief:
- Kodiak Robotics and AP Møller – Mærsk have started commercial autonomous trucking between Houston and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the companies announced Thursday.
- The pair moves cargo four days a week between a Houston facility and the Oklahoma City distribution center. Round-trip routes operate at all hours of the day.
- “As the first stand-alone trucking company to create this new commercial lane between Houston and Oklahoma City, we demonstrate our team’s ability to introduce new lanes and bring new efficiencies to the entire logistics industry,” said Co-Founder and CEO of Kodiak, Don Burnette.
Dive Insight:
The current route is based on previous efforts between the logistics pair.
Kodiak and Maersk began testing AV deliveries in November 2022, and from August, deliveries include eight loads a week with a truck and a safety driver behind the wheel.
Maersk is working to expand its services beyond ocean shipping and instead become a full service, end-to-end logistics provider. In February 2022, they significantly expanded their presence in the US trucking sector with the acquisition of Pilot cargo services.
“As Maersk moves towards becoming an end-to-end logistics solutions provider, autonomous trucks will play an integral role to complement their network,” said Michael Wiesinger, Kodiak’s vice president of merchandising. LinkedIn post on Thursday.
Kodiak, which expects to remove its first safety drivers in 2024 and fully integrate autonomous capabilities with companies in 2025, sees its AVs as critical to such market changes, according to Kodiak Director of External Affairs Daniel Goff .
Texas was a focus activity with AV testing partnerships. Companies like Waabi and Uber Freight debuted on a route between Dallas and Houston, and Aurora Innovation and Werner Enterprises began piloting autonomous transportation between Fort Worth and El Paso last year.
Such partnerships are evaluated and positioned for scale. Maersk plans to continue using autonomous trucks, which do not need to take breaks to meet the hours-of-service regulations that human drivers do.
“Autonomous trucks will play a key role in the digitization of the supply chain,” he said Erez Ammon, Maersk’s global head of innovation. “We expect that autonomous trucks will eventually become a competitive advantage for Maersk.”
Clarification: This story was updated with Goff’s headline.